Employees, patients to be tested for TB

POWAY -- More than 500 patients, former patients and health
workers at a Poway nursing home are being tested for tuberculosis
or being told they should be tested after two employees were found
to be carrying the infectious and potentially deadly disease.

The infected employees are a housekeeper and a nurse's assistant
at Villa Pomerado Skilled Nursing Facility, a 96-bed health care
center adjacent to Pomerado Hospital. The center cares for elderly
patients and others who need constant nursing care, including those
recovering from major surgery.

Hospital and San Diego County Health Department officials said
Saturday there is no evidence that the cases are connected or that
any other employees or patients have contracted the disease, which
is spread through close contact with infected people. They are
continuing to investigate the source of the tuberculosis and
whether the two employees may have spread it to each other.

PPH is testing Villa Pomerado employees and is working to track
down and notify former patients and employees who may have been
exposed to the diseased workers, said Don Herip, medical director
for Palomar Pomerado Health, which runs Villa Pomerado as well at
Palomar and Pomerado Hospitals.

Visitors who have spent a total of 16 hours or more at Villa
Pomerado since October should also be tested, Herip said.

Tests are available through private physicians or through the
San Diego County Department of Health and Human Services, which has
tuberculosis testing clinics in Escondido and Oceanside.

Herip said it was unlikely that either of the infected Villa
Pomerado employees had also worked at Pomerado, which is next door.
But the hospital is looking back through records to see if either
"picked up a shift" at the larger hospital, he said.

Heath workers at both hospitals have been told to be especially
watchful for symptoms of tuberculosis in patients and in other
employees, Herip said. Employees, who tested each year for the
disease, will get several tests this year in light of the new
cases. Each employee at Villa Pomerado is currently being tested
and will repeat the test in 12 weeks to make sure the disease has
not developed.

Tuberculosis, also known as TB, is a bacterial disease that
usually attacks the lungs. The disease is spread through coughs,
sneezes and drops of saliva in the air from an infected person. A
person with TB can pass on the disease by talking in very close
proximity to others, but tuberculosis is not spread through
touching surfaces, such as doorknobs or tables.

"It's airborne, but not entirely," Herip said. "We are talking
about prolonged, close contact with a person … that's what spreads
the disease."

Tuberculosis, which killed tens of thousands of Americans each
year until the first half of the 1950s, has become much less common
-- and far less deadly -- since doctors began using antibiotics to
treat the disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, tuberculosis infected about 15,000 people in 2001, the
most recent year for which the centers have data. The disease
killed 749 people that year.